to which it would be more
properly applied, down to any injunction addressed by a supernatural
being to the hero or heroine of a tale. Folklore students of the
anthropological school are so apt to refer these last prohibitions for
their origin to the more general prohibitions of the former kind, that
perhaps this indiscriminate use of the word may be held to beg some of
the questions at issue. It is certain, however, that the scholars who
originally applied it to what I may call private prohibitions, had no
such thought in their minds. They found it a convenient term, applicable
by no great stretch of its ordinary meaning, and they appropriated it
to the purposes of science. I shall therefore use it without scruple as
a well recognized word, and without any question-begging intent.

Having premised so much, I will proceed to set forth shortly the balder
type of the story, where there is no taboo, then the fuller type. Their
relations to one another will be dealt with in the next chapter.

An Algonkin legend relates that a hunter beheld a basket descend from
heaven, containing twelve young maidens of ravishing beauty. He
attempted to approach, but on perceiving him they quickly re-entered the
basket and were drawn up again out of his sight. Another day, however,
he succeeded, by disguising himself as a mouse, in capturing the
youngest of the damsels, whom he married and by whom he had a son. But
nothing could console his wife for the society of her sisters, which she
had lost. So one day she made a small basket; and having entered it with
her child she sang the charm she and her sisters had formerly used, and
ascended once more to the star from whence she had come. It is added
that when two years had elapsed the star said to his daughter: "Thy son
wants to see his father; go down, therefore, to the earth and fetch thy
husband, and tell him to bring us specimens of all the animals he
kills." This was done. The hunter ascended with his wife to the sky; and
there a great feast was given, in which the animals he brought were
served up. Those of the guests who took the paws or the tails were
transformed into animals. The hunter himself took a white feather, and
with his wife and child was metamorphosed into a falcon.[195] I will
only now remark on the latter part of the tale that it is told by the
same race as the Sheldrake Duck's adventures; and if we deem it probable
that the heroine of that narrative simply resumed her pri